Airlines prepare for daunting task: Restarting system

The unprecedented nationwide grounding of commercial flights in the minutes after Tuesday's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington has left the airline industry with one of the most monumental tasks it has ever faced: getting the country's complex air transportation system restarted.

Aviation experts said the job would begin Wednesday afternoon at the earliest and may take a week to finish.

The nation's hub-and-spoke system that shuffles aircraft around the country using more than two dozen major airports as switching centers is temperamental even at its best. It has been known to take as many as three days for the system to fully recover from something as relatively insignificant as a round of thunderstorms at O'Hare International Airport.

Tuesday's complete ground stop in the U.S. was uncharted territory, experts said, and left planes scattered all over the nation. The landing order from the Federal Aviation Administration forced jetliners in the air at the time of the attacks to make unscheduled stops at airstrips from coast to coast. That left crews in limbo and forced passengers to find local lodging or ground transportation to get to their destinations.

"I would think it will be a slow-go to bring the system back up to speed," said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere. "A national ground stop of this magnitude is unprecedented."

The order suspending all flight operations except those involving military planes was issued at 8:25 a.m. Central Daylight Time, according to the FAA, starting in the New York area shortly after an American AirlinesBoeing 767 rammed the World Trade Center in the first of two attacks.

Unlike weather-related ground stops, in which the FAA issues orders to halt flights at a certain hub or even a pair of hubs, never has the nation's airline industry been completely halted and then forced to restart all of its services. Tuesday's grounding may affect as many as 40,000 commercial and private flights per day, according to the FAA.

The first task for airlines Tuesday was to account for all their aircraft.

"We have confirmed our entire fleet has landed at various airports throughout the [domestic airport] system," said Chris Nardella, a spokeswoman for United Airlines.

Experts said the airlines will have to reconcile whether the crew members that landed each plane can finish their flights under federal rules outlining the number of hours they can work in a 24-hour period.

Also to be considered is whether some of the airstrips that accepted jetliners Tuesday have the refueling capacity to relaunch the planes.

"We will have to rescramble our system," said one American Airlines spokesman.

Southwest Airlines, the nation's seventh-largest carrier and the largest operator at Chicago's Midway Airport, said it might have a less difficult time restarting its system.

"Our planes are all over the place," said Christine Turnabe-Connelly, a spokeswoman for Southwest. "But luckily, we had all planes on the ground by 10:05 a.m. Central because only 360 flights were operating at that time. Only 85 of our flights were diverted."

Turnabe-Connelly said 180 Southwest flights reached their first destination when the ground stop was issued, but not their final destination.

"Once the ground stop is lifted, we have to get our crews and aircraft where they need to be and accommodate customers the best way we can," she said, describing work that could see nearly empty jets moving back to major airports for reloading.

Unlike other major airlines, which operate on the hub-and-spoke system, Southwest's point-to-point operation makes it easier for the airline to recover from the shutdown, Turnabe-Connelly said.

"We will do whatever we can to get our flights out," she said.

FAA spokesman Les Dorr Jr. said noon Wednesday is the "very earliest" that the nationwide halt to air traffic would end.

Some officials cautioned it could be at least several days before flights are allowed to resume as normal, in part because it will take time to implement tougher security measures to restart the commercial aviation system and safeguard passengers.

"There will be higher levels of surveillance, more stringent searches. Airport curbside luggage check-in will no longer be allowed," Mineta said. "There will be more security officers and random identification checks."

When commercial air travel resumes, experts said, passengers will notice many changes.

The list likely will include a ban on non-ticketed passengers from going past airport security checkpoints to the gate areas. Also expected is an increase in the use of high-tech explosive scanners that currently screen a small random sample of checked baggage, and the expanded use of passenger "profiling" techniques to identify potential drug smugglers and terrorists.

Experts said vehicles entering airports, from passenger cars to trucks delivering air cargo, will likely face tougher scrutiny as well.

All of this may have a marked effect on an already lagging U.S. economy, experts said.

"Beyond the passengers, you have a lot of mail, FedEx, UPS issues," said William Waldock, associate director of the Center for Aerospace Safety Education at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz. "Anything with cargo also is grounded. There definitely will be an impact on the economy.